YOUR AD HERE »

PCHS swimmers win Region 10 titles in Tooele

Park City s David Ferris swims in a butterfly stroke race during a meet at the Park City Aquatic Center earlier this year.
20160202__4sportsp1

As back-to-back state champions in both boys’ and girls’ swimming, Park City High School was expected to do well at the Region 10 swim meet over the weekend in Tooele.

With their minds firmly set on a three-peat at the 3A state championships, the Miners still managed to take care of business against their Region 10 foes, winning every event but one to dominate the region meet.

The Park City girls’ team scored 240 points, winning all but one event (the 100-yard breaststroke). Tooele finished in second place with 161 points, Grantsville was third with 89 and Stansbury was fourth with 86.

On the boys’ side, Park City won every event and amassed 225 points to finish ahead of second-place Tooele (168), third-place Grantsville (107) and fourth-place Stansbury (94).

With both the boys’ and girls’ teams winning by wide margins, the Miners easily won in the overall standings with 465 points. Tooele finished with 329 points while Grantsville had 196 and Stansbury had 180.

Since the regions realigned coming into this school year, the Miners were unfamiliar with Tooele’s home pool, but that didn’t stop them from putting up some strong times and breaking records.

"In addition to winning the event, we did break a bunch of Tooele pool records," Park City Coach Kelly O’Brien said. "It’s nice to come into a new pool and make it our own. It was a new pool, so they had to get used to the starting blocks and the turns, but they stepped up."

The girls’ 200-yard medley relay made up of sophomores Katie Hale and Siena Senn, junior Joelle Hess and senior Mara Selznick set the Tooele pool record with a time of 1 minute, 52.19 seconds. The men’s 200 medley relay also broke the pool record as the crew of seniors Jinwon Bailar and Vincent Hess and sophomores Lucas Hess and Cole Peterson finished the race in 1:41.33.

In the boys’ 200 free relay, Lucas Hess, Vincent Hess and Bailar teamed up with junior Alex Yokubison to swim a pool-record time of 1:30.79. The girls’ 400 free relay was the final Park City team to set a pool record, as Selznick and Senn teamed with freshman Elise Beller and junior Rozie Selznick to complete the race in 3:46.37.

Bailar also set the pool record in the 100 backstroke with a time of 52.15 seconds.

As the team prepares for the 3A state swim meet, O’Brien said the Miners will have slightly less strenuous practices to ensure they’re in top form in a couple of weeks.

"With the state team, since we have less kids, we’ll be able to put them in different groups so they’re all getting exactly what they need," she said. "They’ll do some drills catered to their specific events. It’s fine-tuning, but it’s very specific to its group. The distance group will continue getting their yardage in while the sprint group won’t do more than 100 or 200 yards at a time to get their heart rates up."

Swimming at the Brigham Young University pool for the state meet Feb. 12 and 13, O’Brien said she hopes the Miners can win every event and break some state records while doing it.

"All of them, hopefully with this taper [during practice], will be able to," she said. "Some of the kids may already have the record, so I’m challenging them to reach out and break their own record."


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Park City and Summit County make the Park Record's work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.